NEW PERU LEADER IN ACCORD ON DEBT

By PAUL LEWIS, Special to The New York Times

Published: July 1, 1990

UNITED NATIONS, June 30—
Peru's President-elect, Alberto Fujimori, has reached a tentative agreement with the International Monetary Fund and other development agencies on a plan to stabilize his country's tottering economy, resume payment on at least some of its external debts and reintegrate Peru into the international financial system.

The agreement was hammered out here on Friday in a series of meetings between Mr. Fujimori and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Michel Camdessus; the president of the World Bank, Barber B. Conable, and the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Enrique Iglesias. The meetings were organized by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Javier Perez de Cuellar, who is Peruvian.

''Peru is going to rejoin the world economy,'' Mr. Fujimori said in an interview afterward.

Repayments Had Been Stopped

During the five-year term of President Alan Garcia, Peru imposed limits on debt repayment, then stopped them altogether. The action was hailed in other debtor nations as a reassertion of sovereignty eroded by the international lending agencies and the biggest commercial banks, but it left Peru cut off from virtually all outside economic assistance as it struggled to deal with a 2,000 percent annual inflation rate, an empty treasury, 60 percent unemployment, a growing leftist insurgency and an increase in the cultivation of coca leaves, the raw material of cocaine. In agreeing to come back to the international fold, Mr. Fujimori removed the most visible symbol of debtor nations' defiance of the international financial community. But the practical effect on other debtor countries is unclear, since the political and economic conditions in each country differ.

Mr. Fujimori's plan includes a 300 percent tax increase and other measures that constitute the kind of drastic changes that the I.M.F. and banks want from Peru and other debtor nations. I.M.F. officials confirmed the outlines of the plan. In Washington, a spokesman said the Treasury Department had not seen enough details of the plan to know whether it would make Peru eligible for write-offs of debt to the United States under a Latin American assistance plan announced by President Bush on Wednesday. In the interview, Mr. Fujimori welcomed Mr. Bush's plan.

Mr. Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, was elected on June 10 over Mario Vargas Llosa, the novelist, who campaigned with a detailed program of economic austerity.

Mr. Fujimori courted the poor peasantry in the countryside and urban slum dwellers who would suffer most under austerity, and refrained from making detailed economic prescriptions. But he said in the campaign that he would seek to resume debt payments, and he made clear in the interview that he is committed to enacting a tough austerity program under I.M.F. supervision after he succeeds Mr. Garcia on July 28, his 52d birthday.

''We will enact a vigorous anti-inflation campaign and program of institutional reforms,'' he said.

The agreement reached Friday seeks both to stabilize Peru's economy and allow the nation to resume borrowing from international development agencies. Peru has been ineligible for assistance from these institutions since 1987 because it cannot repay the roughly $1.7 billion it already owes them. Peru's total external debt, to foreign governments and commercial banks as well as international lending agencies, is estimated at $17 billion.

Mr. Fujimori said the centerpiece of the austerity plan would be a 300 percent rise in taxes, customs revenues and charges for state-owned services, intended to increase the Government's revenues from the current 4 percent of the gross national product to 12 percent.

The principal utilities, such as telephone service, water and electricity, will remain nationalized, he said. But about 250 smaller state-owned companies will be sold to private investors, and utility rates will be raised enough to make these businesses profitable.

Peru's complex system of multiple exchange rates will be abolished, and its currency, the inti, will be given a single, more realistic value against the American dollar, Mr. Fujimori said.

Monetary Fund officials said that once this economic stabilization package has been drawn up and approved by the Fund, the I.M.F. will in effect convert the roughly $800 million Peru owes it into a new loan, giving the nation the right to start borrowing again.

When Peru starts carrying out the plan, Mr. Fujimori said, he will ask Western industrialized nations to form what is called a ''support group'' to lend his Government the money to pay the $650 million it owes the World Bank and the $250 million owed the Inter-American Development Bank.

The President-elect said he had ''no illusions'' about the difficulty of combating the Shining Path guerrilla movement, which has stepped up attacks in recent months.

But he argued that his austerity measures would not strengthen the guerrillas' support among poorer classes, because his best showing in the election came in those regions where Shining Path traditionally gets most of its recruits. ''The mass of the people have shown quite clearly that they prefer me to Shining Path,'' he said.

Nevertheless, Mr. Fujimori may face parliamentary difficulties in winning support for his new economic program because his Change 90 party has only 32 of the legislature's 180 seats. As a result, it will need to form alliances with other parties.